the results of me messing around (using photo red but I veered from the photo ref by accident then ran with it and it's messy but it was def more engaging to follow something rather than make something up)

I feel like through trying to actively match a color and failing, I managed to figure out a couple of techniques (sort of) with oil pastels, so this was a valuable study even if it doesn't look like anything in the end (supposed to be sunset clouds but I got totally lost)

I follow an oil pastel artist on instagram and I'm always in awe at how they pull together a drawing. I am gonna observe closer now that I have my own oil pastels!

I'm in awe of the white oil pastel... I think as a kid I always avoided it thinking it was useless, or that it didn't do anything. since I saw the instagram artist using white to blend, I finally just used it and WOW it's incredible... it makes things smooth and mellows out a color and helps blend... it works way better than I expected

I guess cuz I've seen white color pencils before and those were hard to use (I probably just didn't know the technique)

also I tried to get like a dark night sky color near the top cuz it should be a gradient but I made some basic color theory mistakes lol and it turned green

some of the more successful colors were me putting orange and purple together to create a sort of orangey brown, and then taking pink or peach and blending with white to get that pink orange sunset cloud color

was very lost as to how to achieve the blue contrast, so that was... interesting

meatdisaster: I used to do something similar with white colored pencils as a teenager, when I was using them all the time -- it's a super cool effect!!!

meatdisaster: i adore the colors and could tell what it was meant to be in the thumbnail!

stardaddy: wahh thank you 😭

I love oil pastels! I went through a huge phase with them in my youth (aside required pieces my art school portfolio was half comic stuff, half emotional/angsty oil pastel interpretations of Mozart's Requiem lmao)

Anyway they're fun and it's nice to see em get love

swoonsea: Yes I am def having fun with them! I wanna find another photo to try and replicate. I feel like I'm learning a lot just from the one attempt